Princess Diana told biographer Andrew Morton that she and Prince Charles were "closer than they'd ever been" in the six weeks before the birth of their second son, Prince Harry, but that the couple's relationship quickly deteriorated after his arrival on Sept. 15, 1984.
In transcriptions from taped interviews that form the basis of Morton's Diana: Her True Story, Diana described an intense period of closeness in the weeks leading up to Harry's birth, followed by a sudden collapse in the marriage. "We were very, very close to each other the six weeks before Harry was born, the closest we've ever, ever been and will be," she told Morton on the recordings. "Then suddenly, as Harry was born, it just went bang, our marriage, the whole thing went down the drain."
Diana's recollections, included in the foreword to the revised 2019 edition of Morton's book, describe the emotional turmoil that surrounded Harry's birth and the royal household's reactions. She told Morton she had seen on a scan that the second child would be a boy and kept that information from Charles, whom she said had wanted a girl to complement their first child, Prince William. Diana quoted Charles as allegedly saying outside the hospital: "Oh God, it's a boy," and then, "And he's even got red hair." Moments later, she said, he told waiting reporters, "He's wonderful. Absolutely marvellous."
Morton's book, originally published in 1992 after he compiled the interviews and tapes, was described by the author as a work that would reshape public understanding of the couple's private life. Morton wrote in the revised edition's foreword that the story — a princess in crisis confiding to an unknown author through an amateur go-between — would have been dismissed as improbable by Hollywood producers but for its basis in the tapes.
Diana also told Morton that Charles's apparent disappointment lingered beyond Harry's birth and into the prince's christening on Dec. 21, 1984. She recounted that Charles told her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, "We're so disappointed, we thought it would be a girl," and that Frances "snapped his head off," reminding him that he should consider himself fortunate to have a child.
The revelations from Diana's taped interviews dovetailed with other accounts of strain in the marriage that surfaced publicly over the following decade. Diana told Morton that arrangements around the birth of William in 1982 had been made to fit Charles's polo schedule, saying William was induced on a date that suited Charles's calendar. The couple publicly presented united fronts on official occasions in the mid-1980s, but fissures were evident and later amplified by media reports and other disclosures.
Years later, Prince Harry addressed aspects of his birth and his place in the royal family in his 2023 memoir, Spare. He wrote that he learned at about age 21 of an anecdote in which his father allegedly said on the day of his birth, "Wonderful! Now you've given me an Heir and a Spare — my work is done." Harry described that remark as a joke but also noted that minutes after it his father was said to have gone to meet a girlfriend.
The marriage between Charles and Diana ended publicly in the early 1990s. Their separation was announced in December 1992 and their divorce was finalised in August 1996. Diana lost the style of Her Royal Highness upon divorce. She died in a car crash in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997, an event that prompted a global outpouring of grief and a funeral service watched by billions.
The dynamics Diana described in her recordings helped shape public narratives about the royal family in the decades that followed. Prince Harry has at times been publicly vocal about feeling cast as the "spare," a label he explored extensively in Spare and in subsequent interviews. Relations among Harry, his brother Prince William and their father, now King Charles III, have been widely reported as strained, and the subject has produced repeated media coverage about whether and how reconciliation might occur.
Morton's book and the tapes it drew on were among a series of disclosures in the early 1990s that altered perceptions of the monarchy's private life and contributed to the couple's decision to separate. Diana's 1995 BBC Panorama interview and later revelations about Charles's relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles further intensified scrutiny of the marriage. Those developments, along with shifting public sentiments about the royals, provided the context for the couple's split and divorce.
Decades later, the accounts of closeness immediately before Harry's birth and of rapid decline afterward remain part of the larger historical record of Charles and Diana's relationship. The narratives recorded by Morton, combined with memoirs and interviews by members of the royal family, continue to inform public discussion of the personal and institutional pressures surrounding the monarchy during that era.